In Greek mythology, Athena transformed Arachne into a spider.
Arachne was a talented mortal weaver from Lydia who claimed that her skill surpassed Athena’s. The goddess, patron of weaving and crafts, challenged her to a contest. Arachne’s tapestry depicted the gods’ deceptions, while Athena’s showed the power of the Olympians and warned mortals against challenging them.
Although Arachne’s work was technically flawless, Athena destroyed it after seeing its irreverent subject. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Arachne hanged herself in grief, and Athena changed her into a spider so that she and her descendants would continue weaving webs.
The story is especially well known through Ovid’s Roman retelling, although its setting and characters are Greek. It explains a mythic connection between spiders and weaving. Arachne is not the same figure as Ariadne, who helped Theseus escape the Cretan Labyrinth.